Lithia Motors (LAD) Receives News Sentiment Score of 0.15

News articles about Lithia Motors (NYSE:LAD) have been trending somewhat positive on Saturday, according to Accern Sentiment Analysis. The research group ranks the sentiment of press coverage by monitoring more than twenty million blog and news sources. Accern ranks coverage of public companies on a scale of -1 to 1, with scores closest to one being the most favorable. Lithia Motors earned a coverage optimism score of 0.15 on Accern’s scale. Accern also assigned news headlines about the company an impact score of 46.4027888341441 out of 100, meaning that recent press coverage is somewhat unlikely to have an impact on the stock’s share price in the next few days.

Here are some of the news headlines that may have impacted Accern Sentiment’s analysis:

Several analysts recently issued reports on LAD shares. KeyCorp restated a “buy” rating and issued a $130.00 price target on shares of Lithia Motors in a research note on Monday, November 13th. Zacks Investment Research upgraded Lithia Motors from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating and set a $121.00 target price for the company in a research report on Wednesday, August 23rd. Finally, Berenberg Bank initiated coverage on Lithia Motors in a research report on Wednesday, October 4th. They set a “hold” rating and a $126.00 target price for the company. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, five have issued a hold rating and three have given a buy rating to the company. Lithia Motors currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $116.29.

Lithia Motors (NYSE:LAD) traded up $1.90 during trading hours on Friday, hitting $118.40. The stock had a trading volume of 349,249 shares, compared to its average volume of 189,306. The company has a market cap of $2,907.61, a P/E ratio of 14.38, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.99 and a beta of 1.72. The company has a current ratio of 1.21, a quick ratio of 0.26 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.96. Lithia Motors has a 1 year low of $80.88 and a 1 year high of $123.50.

Lithia Motors (NYSE:LAD) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, October 25th. The company reported $2.18 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.37 by ($0.19). The company had revenue of $2.69 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.62 billion. Lithia Motors had a net margin of 2.14% and a return on equity of 21.02%. The business’s revenue was up 18.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $2.06 earnings per share. analysts expect that Lithia Motors will post 8.34 EPS for the current fiscal year.

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, November 24th. Stockholders of record on Friday, November 10th were given a dividend of $0.27 per share. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, November 9th. This represents a $1.08 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.91%. Lithia Motors’s payout ratio is 13.12%.

In other news, Director Kenneth E. Roberts sold 534 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, December 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $122.62, for a total transaction of $65,479.08. Following the completion of the sale, the director now directly owns 115,064 shares in the company, valued at approximately $14,109,147.68. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Also, Director Sidney B. Deboer sold 65,711 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, October 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $121.77, for a total value of $8,001,628.47. Following the sale, the director now owns 1,421 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $173,035.17. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last quarter, insiders have sold 116,429 shares of company stock valued at $13,917,011. Corporate insiders own 7.85% of the company’s stock.

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About Lithia Motors

Lithia Motors, Inc is an operator of automotive franchises and a retailer of new and used vehicles and related services. As of February 28, 2017, it offered 30 brands of new vehicles and all brands of used vehicles in 154 stores in the United States and online at Lithia.com, DCHauto.com and CarboneCars.com.